Raleigh Mennonite Church

Scripture: Ruth 1:15-18 What do we do when we are shocked, overwhelmed and devastated? When our hands feel empty and the troubles to come feel so massive? What do we do now? The petty dictators of this world, however severe their terrors, they do not change who God is and how God's word in Jesus comes to us. What do we do now is the question we will ask for many years to come. But what we do will be grounded in another question, a deeper question. Who are we? We are the church of Jesus Christ. In other words, we're followers of Jesus in the same way we were last week and the week before, who we were on Tuesday, who we will be next week, in January, in the years to come.

Isaiah 43:1-7, Hebrews 11:32-12:3 In just two days we have a national election. It's something that has many of us anxious and concerned. The two texts for today are both addressed to people in anxious circumstances. Even with all of the anxiety of the situation in the first passage, the summation of the Isaiah's prophecy to these people is, "Do not be afraid, for I, God, am with you." Some variation on that simple sentence appears more than 300 times in the Bible. So it seems like God realizes this is a problem for us. Do not be afraid, for God is with you. Knowing that doesn't make passing through the floodwaters or walking through the fire or going through chemotherapy or surviving a divorce or being forced from your country or living under a crazy person's rule actually easy. It's really hard to hang on to in difficult circumstances. God will still be God on Wednesday. God will ultimately get the final word. Lord, help us to become people who work toward justice and proclaim your beauty until the day every sorrowful story ends in joy. Until the day when you get the final word.

Isaiah 40: 1-8 This Sunday Melissa Florer-Bixler continued to move further into the words of the prophet Isaiah, when the Persian king Cyrus allowed God's people to return to Israel, ushering in a time of comfort and hope. The prophet spoke of a highway being built from through hostile land between Babylon and Jerusalem, and Melissa reminded us of the tradition of the aesthetics, the desert mothers and fathers, who also lived in hostile places and prayed for all people and ministered to those who came to grief on remote highways. Much like the aesthetics, there have been faithful people in our own lives who have gone before us, sacrificing much, and helping us to see a living model of the path to redemption that Jesus paved for all with his suffering. In this time of political tension and extreme anxiety approaching the election, we may wonder who is speaking the truth, and who might be leading falsely in the name of Christ. Ultimately, we must look at the shape of the way they are trying to pave, and decide if that way has a hope big enough everyone to find the path home to safety and redemption.

Isaiah 46: 1-13 Melissa Florer-Bixler invites us to consider the question, "why do we come to church every Sunday?" as she preaches on Isaiah's message about idols. Isaiah mocks the idols of Israel's former conquerors, now laid low and unable to even help themselves from falling over. In last week's sermon, Melissa stated that we become what we choose to love, and now she adds that when we put our hope into idols that cannot help, we in turn become helpless. Tech giants, political figures, possessions, and all the other trappings of the world offer no more hope than the worthless idols that Isaiah decried. We come to church to kindle the hope we so greatly need by remembering together the stories of how God has loved and nurtured us from the beginning of creation.

Isaiah 11: 1-9 Melissa Florer-Bixler preaches on Isaiah's vision of the lion laying down with the lamb and reminds us, rather appropriately on World Communion Sunday, to consider more deeply in that context how we address the multitude of intractable conflicts occurring throughout the world. Naturally, we cannot rely on willpower alone to overcome the worst "carnivorous" parts of our nature that inflame these conflicts. Rather, it is through the transformative gift of Jesus that we are remade in the image of God and can then work to build real peace. We invite you to listen and join our congregation as we discover how a children's book, Wild Robot, can demonstrate the heart of this transformative process and point us towards practical ideas to implement peace-building.

Isaiah 9: 1-7 Merry Christmas everyone! We know it's only September, but Raleigh Mennonite Church took a moment this Sunday to sing Christmas carols and reflect on the birth of Christ during a season far less busy and distracting than the end of December. Melissa Florer-Bixler's sermon reminds us to take time and examine the coming of Jesus, made flesh, without the holiday sentimentality that can undermine the innately powerful political message embodied in the humble beginnings of Jesus. Not political as we see it today, with everyone looking to a figurehead in one party or another to correct the world's ills. Rather, we must look down into the manger to see Jesus' message of hope to the world that binds all of God's creation together in lovingkindness. It is truly dangerous to the powers and principalities that seek to divide us for a hope to exist that transcends fear and hatred. This politics of hope inexorably calls us to acts, confounding to others, that bring about God's Kingdom. We invite you to remember the Christmas message of hope embodied in Christ anytime the world seeks to make you feel afraid and alone.

Scriptures: Isaiah 2:1-11, Matthew 5:1-12 Melissa continues her sermon series, Hope in a Time of Fear, focusing on the book of Isaiah. As we're drawing closer to the election, what does hope look like for followers of Jesus? The people who heard Jesus' sermon on the mount may have been thinking about Isaiah's words when they heard Jesus speak. They had been crushed beneath the heels of a Roman occupation. And here, at this moment, when all hope is lost, the word of God is born into the world. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. This is not the way it is in our world. The merciful are crushed by political pressures that announce being soft on crime. The pure in heart are taken advantage of and accused of being naïve. The poor face a crisis of debt and eviction. The meek are cast aside for faith and weapons. And yet, we hear in Isaiah: They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up nation, sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. A seemingly impossible scenario to ever occur. But the impossible is where we as followers of Jesus make our home. Take heart. Have no fear. Jesus is Lord!

Scripture: Isaiah 1:1-3, 11-20 Our world is not well. Our politics are not well. Our land and our oceans and our air is not well. We may be anxious. About the future, about elections, about what comes next for you and your family. So this series based on Isaiah will spend time with people who are in the middle of political and social and personal crisis. These are the people of Judah in Jerusalem. The Bible is for people who are down on their luck. The Bible is for people facing odds and terrible outcomes. That's when hope shows up. That's when hope matters. The shape hope takes in our lives has everything to do with how we believe the universe is structured. Hope, writes Walter Brueggemann, is what this community must do. Because it's God's community.

In this last of Melissa's three-part series on Jesus' teaching on bread, the scripture was from John 6:56-59. As we eat this bread, this Jesus, we see God's life growing and healing us. We become a people; a people that believe that we love our neighbors as ourselves. We become a people who refuse to look away from suffering. We become a people who know that no one is the worst thing that they have done. We become a people who will move toward disaster and danger, because we know that is where God is waiting in the wreckage and where there is suffering. We also heard from Wick and Jude who shared about why they have chosen to become baptized.